Spidey 3 is a complete load. I came into it with low expectations, and it still managed to undercut them.
The first major problem with it is the whole Venom thing. They had this movie that was originally going to be about Sandman and the Vulture and the continuation of the whole Hobgoblin/Green Goblin story arc, but then they couldn’t get Kingsley Amis to play the Vulture, and apparently instead of looking for someone else they dropped that idea and decided to pander to the fanbase instead by cramming Venom into a movie that he really doesn’t fit into. I’m not much of a fan of Spider-Man or Marvel Comics in general and I certainly don’t give two shits about Venom, but I recognize that this is a character not only very popular with a lot of people, but also one that is a complex and recurring part of the whole Spider-Man mythos. In this movie, there is no Venom until about the last half hour (of a 2 and a half hour movie), when he finally shows up he’s around for one fight scene and then he gets totally vaporized by a bomb. The whole story with Peter Parker and the alien symbiote from outer space and the eventual creation of Venom is something that probably needs a movie of it’s own right, here it’s just this sort of running footnote that doesn’t evolve into anything until the movie is nearly over and the way they treat it is ridiculous. At the beginning the symbiote just sort of falls out of the sky with no explanation whatsoever, right next to where Peter and Mary Jane happen to be snuggling in Central Park. It hitches a ride home on Peter’s motor scooter and sort of hangs out in his apartment for days before finally bonding to his Spider suit or whatever. Now, you can maybe try to explain this away by saying “Oh, it came to Earth specifically for Peter’s Spider Powers” or whatever. If it wanted super powers, shit, why not go straight for the Hulk or somebody? And anyway, that argument is eventually shown to be horseshit when it bonds to Eddie Brock, a guy who has absolutely nothing to recommend him whatsoever, and turns him into Venom. Anyway, the thing’s main effect is to turn Peter into that dude from The Cure and also make him act like a jerk to everyone and give him a penchant for beating the hell out of villains and killing them. After punching Mary Jane in the face he eventually decides this thing is not a good thing for him to have, he winds up in this bell tower of a church just completely at random trying to rip the symbiote off, suddenly the bell rings and he so conveniently discovers that bells are the symbiote’s secret weakness! Guess what’s even more convenient, Eddie Brock is right below (praying to Jesus for his intervention in killing Peter no less).
Also, Eddie Brock is that kid who used to be on That 70s Show. His nerdly voice coming out of Venom’s body, his wussy trendy club kid face peeping out of Venom’s suit … it just doesn’t work. His getting utterly annihilated at the end is a mixed blessing, because we’re certain he won’t be back to reprise his goofy role, but then it’s going to take some serious deus ex machina bullshit to bring Venom back in any form (if they even make any more of these things, I’m betting they’re done).
Enough about Venom, what else is wrong with this movie? It has all the subtlety of some nuts to the face. A great example is this scene right near the beginning, where the guy who is going to become The Sandman has just escaped from jail and breaks back into his own house to see his daughter one more time and slip some letters under her pillow. It’s going fine until he gets busted by his ex-wife while noisily making a sandwich and then they get into a thing, and then the daughter comes out. OK now at this point we’ve seen the daughter has a respirator and walks using a crutch and generally looks a little pale and unwell. We’ve seen Thomas Hayden Church (Sandman) has a hang-dog look on his face, is humble and non threatening when confronted by his wife, generally just trying to see his kid at least one more time and also pick up a striped shirt and maybe a little tuna on wheat before he gets back to the fugitive lifestyle. The movie has made it very clear, unless perhaps you have suffered some severe brain damage, that he is basically a straight-up guy and a concerned dad that probably just made a dumb mistake out of desperation in caring for his daughter. Yet the movie has to spell it all out, in line after line of needless literal dialogue - “I just need the money for her operation”, “I’m not a bad guy”. OK thanks movie, I was confused about that! Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that they do this - if all the kids watching this are as busy text-messaging and talking on their cell phones as the ones around me were, they probably need constant forceful reminders of what the hell is going on. There’s a whole bunch of these types of things, another big one is during the big fight with Venom at the end, some pipes fall on the ground and it causes Venom to wig out for a sec. Spidey freezes and you can see, he’s remembering the whole church bell deal, but then the movie has to not only show a flashback to the bell but then also has him say something like “That’s it! The bell!”. I mean Jesus, come on, how much of this do we need?
It’s an action movie and one based on a comic book at that, so you expect some incredible coincidence and some sloppy logic. This movie just takes it too far though, there’s so much goofed up that it’s almost a constant distraction. Every time there is a major fight in the city with a supervillain, with buildings getting crushed and debris flying all over, the police have a barracade up right at the fight’s edge where throngs of onlookers can watch like it’s NASCAR or some shit. They don’t even think about trying to get those people out of there and contain the situation, parents all have their kids up in the front row and don’t give a damn, etc. Spidey hell of stands around at the edge of a giant crowd with his mask off and not one person happens to look up at him? Don’t you think someone in the media or somewhere would notice that Mary
Jane is always the one getting kidnapped by these crazed villains, maybe make certain lines of inquiry into why that is? Sandman got away with his first bank robbery - wasn’t that enough to take care of his daughter? Why try to kill Spider-Man later, why give a damn? Hobgoblin gets clonked on the head by a steel pipe while traveling at ludicrous speeds, so Spidey rips off his shirt and starts violently administering CPR to him - maybe his problem is more likely massive head trauma or a broken neck and jerking him around is not the best idea? One of those Goblin Bombs totally wipes out a Venom but when it explodes right next to the other guy it just kind of fucks up the side of his face somewhat? Harry’s butler sees him doing all this fucking crazy shit but decides it’s better to withhold the fact that his dad accidentaly killed himself until *just before* the big final showdown? Isn’t it amazing how nearly everyone who Peter ever crosses paths with later somehow becomes a supervillain? It all adds up to constant tremendous distraction, as you keep thinking to yourself how lame and contrived each of these little manuevers are.
Something else - the time wasted on all this soap opera bullshit could have been better used, maybe to flesh out the symbiote story more, or at least show us what the Sandman and Hobgoblin are up to when the plot doesn’t require them to drop in and start creating chaos. You know, perhaps instead of watching Mary Jane and Peter hash over their relationship in generic TV yuppie kid cliches one or two fewer times we could have maybe got an explanation as to what the black goop is and where the hell it came from. And what is up with these weird sexless universes that Raimi keeps creating? Nobody ever seems to fuck or even think about fucking. Harry gets a little kiss from MJ and then she runs out the door at light speed like she just woke up after a night of drinking with a Dirty Sanchez on her lip. Later on he rhapsodizes to Peter about it like it’s some major sexual conquest, swiping a lame line from Goldeneye (of all movies). Peter’s supposed to be about to marry MJ, but he’s got a tiny single bed in his room that he barely fits on alone. Does she have a bigger bed? Do they just fuck at her place all the time? The only character showing any life at all is Gwen Stacy, played by the rather cute newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, who gives Spidey another of those hanging kisses and shows just a bit of cleavage during a modeling shoot. Kirsten Dunst spends most of the movie all wrapped up and looking frumpy and miserable.
Also back are those bizarre long shots of Tobey Macguire doing his dazed bug-eyed gaze at the camera that are just disturbing in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. I don’t know why Raimi likes these so much or why they’ve become a hallmark of the series but they’re back in force. And of course Spidey has to run in front of a billowing American flag at one point. Is the Department of Homeland Security paying to have these shots put in these movies or something?
Maybe this all sounds a bit harsh, but look - they spent what, $250 *million* dollars on this thing? You spend as much money as the yearly trade deficits of famished African countries, the least you can do is deliver an awesome movie, which this isn’t. The special effects are really impressive but the rest of it is spotty and lame.
To end on a positive note, at least the guy playing J. Jonah Jameson is hilarious as ever, and the weird homage to Saturday Night Fever was unexpected and pretty good (even if it’s going to fly over the heads of most of the young audience).
Links :
* The Totally Official Trailer
Monday, February 25, 2008
Spider-Man 3
Spidey 3 is a complete load. I came into it with low expectations, and it still managed to undercut them.
The first major problem with it is the whole Venom thing. They had this movie that was originally going to be about Sandman and the Vulture and the continuation of the whole Hobgoblin/Green Goblin story arc, but then they couldn’t get Kingsley Amis to play the Vulture, and apparently instead of looking for someone else they dropped that idea and decided to pander to the fanbase instead by cramming Venom into a movie that he really doesn’t fit into. I’m not much of a fan of Spider-Man or Marvel Comics in general and I certainly don’t give two shits about Venom, but I recognize that this is a character not only very popular with a lot of people, but also one that is a complex and recurring part of the whole Spider-Man mythos. In this movie, there is no Venom until about the last half hour (of a 2 and a half hour movie), when he finally shows up he’s around for one fight scene and then he gets totally vaporized by a bomb. The whole story with Peter Parker and the alien symbiote from outer space and the eventual creation of Venom is something that probably needs a movie of it’s own right, here it’s just this sort of running footnote that doesn’t evolve into anything until the movie is nearly over and the way they treat it is ridiculous. At the beginning the symbiote just sort of falls out of the sky with no explanation whatsoever, right next to where Peter and Mary Jane happen to be snuggling in Central Park. It hitches a ride home on Peter’s motor scooter and sort of hangs out in his apartment for days before finally bonding to his Spider suit or whatever. Now, you can maybe try to explain this away by saying “Oh, it came to Earth specifically for Peter’s Spider Powers” or whatever. If it wanted super powers, shit, why not go straight for the Hulk or somebody? And anyway, that argument is eventually shown to be horseshit when it bonds to Eddie Brock, a guy who has absolutely nothing to recommend him whatsoever, and turns him into Venom. Anyway, the thing’s main effect is to turn Peter into that dude from The Cure and also make him act like a jerk to everyone and give him a penchant for beating the hell out of villains and killing them. After punching Mary Jane in the face he eventually decides this thing is not a good thing for him to have, he winds up in this bell tower of a church just completely at random trying to rip the symbiote off, suddenly the bell rings and he so conveniently discovers that bells are the symbiote’s secret weakness! Guess what’s even more convenient, Eddie Brock is right below (praying to Jesus for his intervention in killing Peter no less).
Also, Eddie Brock is that kid who used to be on That 70s Show. His nerdly voice coming out of Venom’s body, his wussy trendy club kid face peeping out of Venom’s suit … it just doesn’t work. His getting utterly annihilated at the end is a mixed blessing, because we’re certain he won’t be back to reprise his goofy role, but then it’s going to take some serious deus ex machina bullshit to bring Venom back in any form (if they even make any more of these things, I’m betting they’re done).
Enough about Venom, what else is wrong with this movie? It has all the subtlety of some nuts to the face. A great example is this scene right near the beginning, where the guy who is going to become The Sandman has just escaped from jail and breaks back into his own house to see his daughter one more time and slip some letters under her pillow. It’s going fine until he gets busted by his ex-wife while noisily making a sandwich and then they get into a thing, and then the daughter comes out. OK now at this point we’ve seen the daughter has a respirator and walks using a crutch and generally looks a little pale and unwell. We’ve seen Thomas Hayden Church (Sandman) has a hang-dog look on his face, is humble and non threatening when confronted by his wife, generally just trying to see his kid at least one more time and also pick up a striped shirt and maybe a little tuna on wheat before he gets back to the fugitive lifestyle. The movie has made it very clear, unless perhaps you have suffered some severe brain damage, that he is basically a straight-up guy and a concerned dad that probably just made a dumb mistake out of desperation in caring for his daughter. Yet the movie has to spell it all out, in line after line of needless literal dialogue - “I just need the money for her operation”, “I’m not a bad guy”. OK thanks movie, I was confused about that! Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that they do this - if all the kids watching this are as busy text-messaging and talking on their cell phones as the ones around me were, they probably need constant forceful reminders of what the hell is going on. There’s a whole bunch of these types of things, another big one is during the big fight with Venom at the end, some pipes fall on the ground and it causes Venom to wig out for a sec. Spidey freezes and you can see, he’s remembering the whole church bell deal, but then the movie has to not only show a flashback to the bell but then also has him say something like “That’s it! The bell!”. I mean Jesus, come on, how much of this do we need?
It’s an action movie and one based on a comic book at that, so you expect some incredible coincidence and some sloppy logic. This movie just takes it too far though, there’s so much goofed up that it’s almost a constant distraction. Every time there is a major fight in the city with a supervillain, with buildings getting crushed and debris flying all over, the police have a barracade up right at the fight’s edge where throngs of onlookers can watch like it’s NASCAR or some shit. They don’t even think about trying to get those people out of there and contain the situation, parents all have their kids up in the front row and don’t give a damn, etc. Spidey hell of stands around at the edge of a giant crowd with his mask off and not one person happens to look up at him? Don’t you think someone in the media or somewhere would notice that Mary
Jane is always the one getting kidnapped by these crazed villains, maybe make certain lines of inquiry into why that is? Sandman got away with his first bank robbery - wasn’t that enough to take care of his daughter? Why try to kill Spider-Man later, why give a damn? Hobgoblin gets clonked on the head by a steel pipe while traveling at ludicrous speeds, so Spidey rips off his shirt and starts violently administering CPR to him - maybe his problem is more likely massive head trauma or a broken neck and jerking him around is not the best idea? One of those Goblin Bombs totally wipes out a Venom but when it explodes right next to the other guy it just kind of fucks up the side of his face somewhat? Harry’s butler sees him doing all this fucking crazy shit but decides it’s better to withhold the fact that his dad accidentaly killed himself until *just before* the big final showdown? Isn’t it amazing how nearly everyone who Peter ever crosses paths with later somehow becomes a supervillain? It all adds up to constant tremendous distraction, as you keep thinking to yourself how lame and contrived each of these little manuevers are.
Something else - the time wasted on all this soap opera bullshit could have been better used, maybe to flesh out the symbiote story more, or at least show us what the Sandman and Hobgoblin are up to when the plot doesn’t require them to drop in and start creating chaos. You know, perhaps instead of watching Mary Jane and Peter hash over their relationship in generic TV yuppie kid cliches one or two fewer times we could have maybe got an explanation as to what the black goop is and where the hell it came from. And what is up with these weird sexless universes that Raimi keeps creating? Nobody ever seems to fuck or even think about fucking. Harry gets a little kiss from MJ and then she runs out the door at light speed like she just woke up after a night of drinking with a Dirty Sanchez on her lip. Later on he rhapsodizes to Peter about it like it’s some major sexual conquest, swiping a lame line from Goldeneye (of all movies). Peter’s supposed to be about to marry MJ, but he’s got a tiny single bed in his room that he barely fits on alone. Does she have a bigger bed? Do they just fuck at her place all the time? The only character showing any life at all is Gwen Stacy, played by the rather cute newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, who gives Spidey another of those hanging kisses and shows just a bit of cleavage during a modeling shoot. Kirsten Dunst spends most of the movie all wrapped up and looking frumpy and miserable.
Also back are those bizarre long shots of Tobey Macguire doing his dazed bug-eyed gaze at the camera that are just disturbing in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. I don’t know why Raimi likes these so much or why they’ve become a hallmark of the series but they’re back in force. And of course Spidey has to run in front of a billowing American flag at one point. Is the Department of Homeland Security paying to have these shots put in these movies or something?
Maybe this all sounds a bit harsh, but look - they spent what, $250 *million* dollars on this thing? You spend as much money as the yearly trade deficits of famished African countries, the least you can do is deliver an awesome movie, which this isn’t. The special effects are really impressive but the rest of it is spotty and lame.
To end on a positive note, at least the guy playing J. Jonah Jameson is hilarious as ever, and the weird homage to Saturday Night Fever was unexpected and pretty good (even if it’s going to fly over the heads of most of the young audience).
Links :
* The Totally Official Trailer
The first major problem with it is the whole Venom thing. They had this movie that was originally going to be about Sandman and the Vulture and the continuation of the whole Hobgoblin/Green Goblin story arc, but then they couldn’t get Kingsley Amis to play the Vulture, and apparently instead of looking for someone else they dropped that idea and decided to pander to the fanbase instead by cramming Venom into a movie that he really doesn’t fit into. I’m not much of a fan of Spider-Man or Marvel Comics in general and I certainly don’t give two shits about Venom, but I recognize that this is a character not only very popular with a lot of people, but also one that is a complex and recurring part of the whole Spider-Man mythos. In this movie, there is no Venom until about the last half hour (of a 2 and a half hour movie), when he finally shows up he’s around for one fight scene and then he gets totally vaporized by a bomb. The whole story with Peter Parker and the alien symbiote from outer space and the eventual creation of Venom is something that probably needs a movie of it’s own right, here it’s just this sort of running footnote that doesn’t evolve into anything until the movie is nearly over and the way they treat it is ridiculous. At the beginning the symbiote just sort of falls out of the sky with no explanation whatsoever, right next to where Peter and Mary Jane happen to be snuggling in Central Park. It hitches a ride home on Peter’s motor scooter and sort of hangs out in his apartment for days before finally bonding to his Spider suit or whatever. Now, you can maybe try to explain this away by saying “Oh, it came to Earth specifically for Peter’s Spider Powers” or whatever. If it wanted super powers, shit, why not go straight for the Hulk or somebody? And anyway, that argument is eventually shown to be horseshit when it bonds to Eddie Brock, a guy who has absolutely nothing to recommend him whatsoever, and turns him into Venom. Anyway, the thing’s main effect is to turn Peter into that dude from The Cure and also make him act like a jerk to everyone and give him a penchant for beating the hell out of villains and killing them. After punching Mary Jane in the face he eventually decides this thing is not a good thing for him to have, he winds up in this bell tower of a church just completely at random trying to rip the symbiote off, suddenly the bell rings and he so conveniently discovers that bells are the symbiote’s secret weakness! Guess what’s even more convenient, Eddie Brock is right below (praying to Jesus for his intervention in killing Peter no less).
Also, Eddie Brock is that kid who used to be on That 70s Show. His nerdly voice coming out of Venom’s body, his wussy trendy club kid face peeping out of Venom’s suit … it just doesn’t work. His getting utterly annihilated at the end is a mixed blessing, because we’re certain he won’t be back to reprise his goofy role, but then it’s going to take some serious deus ex machina bullshit to bring Venom back in any form (if they even make any more of these things, I’m betting they’re done).
Enough about Venom, what else is wrong with this movie? It has all the subtlety of some nuts to the face. A great example is this scene right near the beginning, where the guy who is going to become The Sandman has just escaped from jail and breaks back into his own house to see his daughter one more time and slip some letters under her pillow. It’s going fine until he gets busted by his ex-wife while noisily making a sandwich and then they get into a thing, and then the daughter comes out. OK now at this point we’ve seen the daughter has a respirator and walks using a crutch and generally looks a little pale and unwell. We’ve seen Thomas Hayden Church (Sandman) has a hang-dog look on his face, is humble and non threatening when confronted by his wife, generally just trying to see his kid at least one more time and also pick up a striped shirt and maybe a little tuna on wheat before he gets back to the fugitive lifestyle. The movie has made it very clear, unless perhaps you have suffered some severe brain damage, that he is basically a straight-up guy and a concerned dad that probably just made a dumb mistake out of desperation in caring for his daughter. Yet the movie has to spell it all out, in line after line of needless literal dialogue - “I just need the money for her operation”, “I’m not a bad guy”. OK thanks movie, I was confused about that! Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that they do this - if all the kids watching this are as busy text-messaging and talking on their cell phones as the ones around me were, they probably need constant forceful reminders of what the hell is going on. There’s a whole bunch of these types of things, another big one is during the big fight with Venom at the end, some pipes fall on the ground and it causes Venom to wig out for a sec. Spidey freezes and you can see, he’s remembering the whole church bell deal, but then the movie has to not only show a flashback to the bell but then also has him say something like “That’s it! The bell!”. I mean Jesus, come on, how much of this do we need?
It’s an action movie and one based on a comic book at that, so you expect some incredible coincidence and some sloppy logic. This movie just takes it too far though, there’s so much goofed up that it’s almost a constant distraction. Every time there is a major fight in the city with a supervillain, with buildings getting crushed and debris flying all over, the police have a barracade up right at the fight’s edge where throngs of onlookers can watch like it’s NASCAR or some shit. They don’t even think about trying to get those people out of there and contain the situation, parents all have their kids up in the front row and don’t give a damn, etc. Spidey hell of stands around at the edge of a giant crowd with his mask off and not one person happens to look up at him? Don’t you think someone in the media or somewhere would notice that Mary
Jane is always the one getting kidnapped by these crazed villains, maybe make certain lines of inquiry into why that is? Sandman got away with his first bank robbery - wasn’t that enough to take care of his daughter? Why try to kill Spider-Man later, why give a damn? Hobgoblin gets clonked on the head by a steel pipe while traveling at ludicrous speeds, so Spidey rips off his shirt and starts violently administering CPR to him - maybe his problem is more likely massive head trauma or a broken neck and jerking him around is not the best idea? One of those Goblin Bombs totally wipes out a Venom but when it explodes right next to the other guy it just kind of fucks up the side of his face somewhat? Harry’s butler sees him doing all this fucking crazy shit but decides it’s better to withhold the fact that his dad accidentaly killed himself until *just before* the big final showdown? Isn’t it amazing how nearly everyone who Peter ever crosses paths with later somehow becomes a supervillain? It all adds up to constant tremendous distraction, as you keep thinking to yourself how lame and contrived each of these little manuevers are.
Something else - the time wasted on all this soap opera bullshit could have been better used, maybe to flesh out the symbiote story more, or at least show us what the Sandman and Hobgoblin are up to when the plot doesn’t require them to drop in and start creating chaos. You know, perhaps instead of watching Mary Jane and Peter hash over their relationship in generic TV yuppie kid cliches one or two fewer times we could have maybe got an explanation as to what the black goop is and where the hell it came from. And what is up with these weird sexless universes that Raimi keeps creating? Nobody ever seems to fuck or even think about fucking. Harry gets a little kiss from MJ and then she runs out the door at light speed like she just woke up after a night of drinking with a Dirty Sanchez on her lip. Later on he rhapsodizes to Peter about it like it’s some major sexual conquest, swiping a lame line from Goldeneye (of all movies). Peter’s supposed to be about to marry MJ, but he’s got a tiny single bed in his room that he barely fits on alone. Does she have a bigger bed? Do they just fuck at her place all the time? The only character showing any life at all is Gwen Stacy, played by the rather cute newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard, who gives Spidey another of those hanging kisses and shows just a bit of cleavage during a modeling shoot. Kirsten Dunst spends most of the movie all wrapped up and looking frumpy and miserable.
Also back are those bizarre long shots of Tobey Macguire doing his dazed bug-eyed gaze at the camera that are just disturbing in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. I don’t know why Raimi likes these so much or why they’ve become a hallmark of the series but they’re back in force. And of course Spidey has to run in front of a billowing American flag at one point. Is the Department of Homeland Security paying to have these shots put in these movies or something?
Maybe this all sounds a bit harsh, but look - they spent what, $250 *million* dollars on this thing? You spend as much money as the yearly trade deficits of famished African countries, the least you can do is deliver an awesome movie, which this isn’t. The special effects are really impressive but the rest of it is spotty and lame.
To end on a positive note, at least the guy playing J. Jonah Jameson is hilarious as ever, and the weird homage to Saturday Night Fever was unexpected and pretty good (even if it’s going to fly over the heads of most of the young audience).
Links :
* The Totally Official Trailer
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